Blackblade 11.0 - Only Some Breaking-and-Entering, Kidnapping, Theft, and Murder
With the aid of their new guide Cor Allamanda, the group entered Riolythe City proper. As dawn was just breaking and they had been walking all through the night, the men were all rather tired. Cor explained to them that there were no hotels, as those who were visiting do so on the invitation of a house and so stay with their sponsors. It was decided that the best place for them to stay was in the far corner of the public gardens, and so Cor lead them across the wide, empty streets to the garden entryway. Broken Tusk was intrigued by the wide variety of plant life kept here, though a bit confused by the strangely rigid sorting-and-labeling system. They found a cluster of trees and slept for a few hours while Cor stood by. Late that morning, they decided to keep their priorities straight: they went directly to the trading hall to devest themselves of their gem hoard. They wandered about the mostly empty hall, poking their heads into a variety of stores that struck their interests. Ragoom purchased a striking, triangle-shaped, gold-coloured, magnetically-affixing handy haversack, a mysterious twisted ring, and a blue, intricately-detailed magical mace. Caelan purchased an enchanted dirk with an ice crystal pattern etched down the blade, and a set of magic horseshoes from a spirited, orange-haired elf girl with a love of animals. Raito, for his part, bought an odd, spring-loaded device, and got a pair of defective rods from the mace dealer, who was rather ashamed of them and wanted them removed from the country. All of their purchases were made with handfuls of individual gems, which some craftsmen found hilarious, while others politely found aggravating. With their funds depleted, they decided to travel to the archives, to see if they could find any follow-up information on the mysterious Yetoman Cor had mentioned. They soon found themselves in the immense library. A slightly strained conversation with the front desk clerk did not give them much, other than that the man hadn't come to read anything, only to have a meeting with a head-of-house that the clerk couldn't remember. Somewhat frustrated, they walked deeper into the library to discuss what to do next. Eventually, thanks to some aggravated advice from Cor, they decided that the most feasible path involved asking around town to see if anyone could remember which heads-of-house were around town in that time frame. However, within that span of time, Yomiel had snuck off. Using Ragoom's detection magic, they eventually tracked him down in the stacks, using some sort of magic to disguise himself as an elf while he pointedly flipped through books. Arguing with him quickly proved futile, so they decided to leave him there on the hopes that he wouldn't leave. As they left, they learned from the desk clerk that those of house Yuen do not go to the archives, based on some sort of incident that offended them some years ago. The group traveled first to the gardens to see what they could learn. Broken Tusk had a deeply worrying conversation with a botanist who could not seem to explain why he was trying to cross-breed two flowers, while Ragoom had a pleasant conversation with a passer-by who claimed that, about 2 months ago, the heads of the Tir and Wen houses were having a huge, drawn-out argument regarding zoning laws in the gardens. They also learned that, for some sort of personal tradition, the Drow heads had not been in town for several months. Moving on to the recreation center, Caelan met an elven woman who was figure skating. Knowing how to skate himself, he went out to have a discussion with her. His balance on skates impressed her, and, between a lesson in spinning and some subtle flirting, she mentioned that a few heads had been seen around that time, including the Vol, the Yuen and the Soh. Going to the educational facility next, they bumped into a janitor, using a pair of wands to remove and rewax the floor. He seemed a bit flustered to be talking to them, but did mention that the heads of house Iro teach everyday at the school, and since they have cordoned off a section of the school for their own purposes, they haven't left in some time. Finally, popping back into the trading hall, Raito spoke to a jewelry craftsman and learned that everyone hated when a head of house purchased something, as they tended to make a big deal about little things. In fact, the heads of house Soh had purchased something a few months ago, and had harped continuously at the merchant for days for some slight. Deciding that they did not particularly want to risk going to the town hall, the group returned to the library to collect Yomiel. They found him frantically copying something down, and were forced to wait while he finished. When that was done, they decided to return to the garden to sleep out the night. Cor left them, wanting to spend the night in her own bed, though Raito tasked her with finding and questioning the guide who had taken the Yetoman to the library. The next morning, Cor met with them again, and said that she had spoken to her friend, and that she didn't remember anything in particular: he didn't speak to her and he had no attendants, and so she had only taken him to the library and left him, since he was meeting with the heads alone; she wasn't there by the time they had arrived. The group argued for a while: they had narrowed the suspect list to house Vol, though the information they had was dubious at best. They could not think of any easy way to dig for better intel, but did not want to jump to a rash conclusion. Raito wanted to leave Riolythe and find some sort of legitimate way to re-enter the country to question the high houses, but also revealed his cynical opinion that there was no particular reason to hunt down the assumed demonic circle since it wasn't like they could do anything about them anyways. Caelan was insistent that they find it, and the others agreed that leaving meant they were unlikely to return anytime soon. Cor was becoming increasingly agitated, and Yomiel thought they were wasting their time sitting around. Finally, they settled on a plan: since the main property of house Vol was several days away, they would secretly investigate the local estate of the family instead. Knowing that they couldn't leave Kirsikka and Traveler alone, Caelan ran and left them in the care of the animal-loving elf woman they had met the day before. When he returned, they used Yomiel's Disguise Self infusions to make themselves look like average Cor elves. Now prepared, they left Cor Allamanda in front of the building and made their way into the servants' entrance. The party split into two groups to search both sides of the house. They crept about the mostly empty halls to find that the lower portion was designed mainly to entertain guests; they managed to avoid the few people who seemed to be working in the kitchen and one of the sitting rooms. They met up as they moved towards the third floor. The door leading there was locked; Yomiel very nearly tripped an Alarm spell while unlocking it, and dispelled it with a special bomb and a show of rather rash anger. He proceeded to open the lock, and the group went upstairs. The third floor was a series of halls and closed doors; the several that were opened revealed unused bedrooms, a bathroom, and an office where an elf was working that they barely managed to not disturb. However, they managed to discover that between two rooms was a well-hidden door leading up to a fourth floor. When Raito used his Detect Magic spell, he felt the now-familiar searing headache that accompianied the demonic circles from upstairs. Working as carefully as they could, they worked out that the door was locked and Alarmed, and that they either needed to trip the Alarm, or risk alerting the nearby elves with the sound of shattering glass of Yomiel's dispel. They decided to just risk the Alarm; they opened the door to find another staircase behind it, which they ran up. At the top of the stairs, they found another locked door. Deciding that their time was short, Broken Tusk smashed his fist through the door and opened it, revealing a storage room of sorts. The room was barren, save for the demonic enchantment, and an elven boy with a yellow neckband who appeared to be drawing it. The enchantment was not yet complete, and the boy seemed starved, disheveled and mistreated, and was chained to the floor. He huddled himself as they first entered, but when he looked up he started to panic, confused. The short, harried manner of the group did not calm him any, and he started to ramble something about the devil in the room and how it had to be killed before it could leave. Everyone scrabbled about; Yomiel, after drinking a potion, threw a bomb at a seemingly-empty corner of the room and ran to block the door. He was quickly beset by some sort of invisible assailant. Raito, with great speed and accuracy, swung Takuetsu and, whatever the creature was, died in a flash of fire. Ragoom shattered the chain that bound the boy, but as they turned to leave, five elves ran up into the room. Two were women wearing fine clothes and yellow neckbands, while the other three wore armour and were obviously guards; the women ordered the intruders be killed immediately. A fierce fight broke out; Yomiel entangled two of the guards in a sticky goop, Broken Tusk assalted one with magical heat, while Raito assailed one of the women with his sword and spells. Within seconds, Raito drove Takuetsu deep into one of the women, and she fell to the floor. Crying out, the other woman ran to her side, claimed the fallen's spellbook and neckband, and fled the room, tears falling from her eyes. One of the guards followed her. The remaining two guards were slain in short order while Raito and Broken Tusk ran after the two who fled. The woman appeared to have disappeared, while the guard managed to get enough of a head-start that Broken Tusk decided not to bother continuing the chase. Ragoom tried to magically calm the elf boy, who had fled into a corner and was having a panic attack, which led to the boy passing out. Knowing that they had to escape quickly, Ragoom and Caelan grabbed the boy and told Yomiel to try to destroy the circle as they ran. He tossed a bomb over his shoulder as he escaped, but it appeared to have no effect on the incomplete enchantment. Passing the boy to Broken Tusk, the group agreed to meet that evening in the gardens and scattered: Caelan ran back to fetch the animals from the trading hall, then hid in woods outside of the gardens, Broken Tusk and Ragoom dropped their illusions and ran into the woods bordering the city with the boy, Raito ran and hid in the depths of the archives, and Yomiel became invisible and fled to who-knows-where. As they waited out the tense afternoon, Raito cast the Sending scroll to Ridley, telling him to meet them in the gardens, that "the heat was on" and to be careful. Ridley's response seemed to be mostly amusement, but he agreed to show up. Meanwhile, the boy regained consciousness; he was still scared and panicked out of his senses, and wanted to flee immediately. Ragoom and Broken Tusk held him back and managed to convince him that they were going to help him escape, but they needed to wait until nightfall. Unwilling and frightened though he was, the young Vol agreed. Night eventually fell, and everyone met at the designated spot, including Yomiel. Everyone was on-edge, not least of all Vol. When Ridley arrived, he joked that they really did come and blow everything up like Jack said; Caelan, in a fluster, replied that no, no, they had only committed breaking-and-entering, kidnapping, theft and murder. He still was seeming to find this amusing, though he skipped a beat when he saw that it was a high house member who was with them. When they convinced him that it was alright, he replied that "well, as long as he isn't coming back, I suppose it won't hurt me any", and led them deeper into the woods towards the border. As they walked, Ridley made a point of deeking around the group. By the time they reached the border, he had mumbled to everyone, "Just trust me, don't question." He got the group to stop while he ran ahead; when he returned, he told everyone that they would run straight away, one at a time, just like they did last time. He then invited Vol to go first, who jumped off Kirsikka and fled, all too eager to get away. Ridley quietly counted off, then told the others to wait a moment while he untriggered the rest of the alarms. When they questioned him, he explained that this way, the elves would "know" that Vol left the country alone, hopefully preventing an international incident. He disabled the rest of the security and rushed them on, telling them that he'd catch up in Verdigris. They quickly overtook Vol, and the group ran the night through, making it into Verdigris in the wee hours of the night. The group got rooms in the local AAA, locked the still-shellshocked Vol in one of them, and got food while they tried to collect themselves. Ridley joined them presently, and they went to question the young elf. The boy introduced himself finally as Vol Pontederian; he answered some of their questions, but it was obvious that he was tired, panicked, and distraught. He said that he had made the enchantment, under the orders of the heads of house, and that the knowledge of it had been magically granted to him by a man in armour named Lord Miro. He had been chosen, he supposed, because he was disposable, the youngest male in the family at the time. When questioned about the symbol on the cursed paper, which had indicated a stick to be located in Riolythe, he replied that he didn't know anything about sticks: sticks are worthless things, broken off the tree and discarded. Caelan took this to be a sign that they had identified the clue correctly, while Raito was just offended that the paper had apparently resorted to metaphor. They fussed about what to do next, especially once they determined that they were highly vulnerable to scrying, and that they could very well be being watched right that moment. Ridley, who had piped up a few times during the conversation, decided that he was going to go to the bar, but as he walked out he tossed what appeared to be a small Riolythan spellbook over to Vol. Unsure of their next plan of action, but agreed that there was nothing much else to be done that night, everyone decided to get some rest. Except for Raito, who needed to know what his discounted rods did. Waving the first around appeared to produce a randomized effect, which led to a barrel being flipped upside down several times before exploding. The second rod seemed to contain a somewhat broken-looking spell; waving it teleported Raito about 10 miles out of town, which he had to begrudgingly walk back before the sun rose. Category:Banishment of the Blackblades